Enter a New York City much cleaner and more orderly than the one its residents actually inhabit. The streets almost sparkle and are rarely clogged with people; the interiors are either minimalist or lamplit and book-lined. The social gatherings—dinner parties, memorial services, and the like—are outwardly very civil, and if the guests engage in backbiting, they do so in a way that is easy to detect. A musical score, alternating between emotional piano and droll brass instruments, complements the charming world presented on screen. The characters depicted are mostly writers and others connected to the literary world. A voice-over from Iris (Naomi Watts), a writer herself, addresses someone whose identity remains uncertain. The most likely candidate would seem to be Walter (Bill Murray), a famous writer who recently died by suicide.

Iris’s relationship with Walter is complex. She is a former student, a longtime friend, and a former lover. Along with his adult daughter (Sarah Pidgeon), she is tasked with editing his correspondence for a book. This responsibility effectively eclipses her own writing, and the rest of her time is spent teaching creative writing to students she finds less than inspiring. The departed Walter had a wife, two ex-wives, and many lovers. Given the way several women roll their eyes and smile when they speak of him, he was been someone who both maddened those close to him and inspired their devotion. Iris quickly discovers, however, that Walter has saddled her with a burden she finds bewildering—his dog, a Great Dane named Apollo. Walter’s most recent wife doesn’t want him and insists that Walter said Iris could be trusted with the dog. Her relationship with Apollo leads to a series of problems and epiphanies that change her life.

The Friend is based on the glowingly reviewed novel of the same name by Sigrid Nunez. I will need to come to the book someday with fresh eyes, but I can’t pretend that this movie makes me excited to read it. The audience is asked to bring sympathy and understanding to this story of processing grief, working through troubled relationships, finding new connections, and using writing itself as a means of wrestling with these matters. The best this viewer could muster was skepticism. The adaptation fails to make Walter a believable object of devotion for his former partners. The screenplay does not provide enough information about him, and what it does provide fails to convince. The realizations Iris has about him are ones the audience has already grasped long before they occur—they are best described as maudlin (a description that applies to most of the film).

A persistent question hovers over all the action: Why does any of this matter? The actual stakes are that if Iris does not find a place for this giant dog to live, she may be evicted from her rent-controlled apartment (the building does not allow pets). Certain plot developments in the latter half involve a level of self-centeredness and lack of realism that the film intends to be affirming but instead make Iris look spoiled. At times, it feels like Eat Pray Love or Under the Tuscan Sun are the best points of reference. To put it bluntly, the term “first world problems” doesn’t even begin to cover it. Not to mention that this tidy, clean, and literary version of the city appears more like the fantasy of a teenager who has yet to move to New York.

Naomi Watts, however, is essentially incapable of embarrassing herself, regardless of the material she’s handed. For many viewers, her restrained, unsentimental portrayal of a tired and confused woman may be enough to carry the story. The dog is often a welcome presence as well, and a plot turn in which the canine loves to be read to provides a kind of winsome comedy that the rest of the movie lacks.